If we only consider countries that are connected by land, there are 16 Spanish speaking countries in the Americas, totaling 11,301,072 km2 in area. That's only slightly larger than Canada (9,984,670 km2) and the United States (9,826,675 km2)

Brazil alone (8,459,417 km2) is almost as large as all Spanish-speaking South American countries combined (8,837,787 km2).

How did former Spanish colonies in the Americas become so fragmented compared to their Portuguese and English counterparts?

Europe is even more fragmented in a smaller area...
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JozeNov 10 '11 at 7:07

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@Joze: Bad example - Europeans speak lots of languages and are historically separated. The former Spanish colonies in the Americas all speak the same language (at least they used to, now there are different dialects) and share the same history.
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Wladimir PalantNov 10 '11 at 13:51

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@WladimirPalant Being a latin american myself, we still speak the same language but we are culturally separated even more so than europeans.(dialects are meaningless we can understand each other to 100% (maybe not in equatorial guinea or philippines though)) There are other factors. I am for now elaborating a good answer for this question. We may share a MODERN history and just the war of independence history but not more. Europeans historically separated? In what sense? To me europe is historically inherently united.
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JozeNov 10 '11 at 13:58

I don't think it's accurate to say that Brazil is so special becuase it's big, remember a lot of brazil is jungle and wouldn't have been populated by settlers
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RoryNov 11 '11 at 10:10

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Brazil is also big by population as well as by area. There are more Portuguese speakers than Spanish speakers in South America.
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hippietrailNov 19 '11 at 11:44

The Napoleonic Empire imprisoned king Ferdinand VII and replaced him with Joseph Bonaparte. The Spanish resistance both in the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas formed governing juntas and claimed sovereignty in the absence of a legitimate monarch. In addition, the Spanish territories in the were considered a possession of the king of Spain rather than colonies of Spain. Thus the juntas in the Americas justified self government under the principle of retroversion of the sovereignty to the people.

These juntas fought wars that led to independent countries and merged into larger nations, such as:

These nations were usually led by a strong centralized government with a perpetual military ruler (or a monarch in the case of the Mexican Empire). The strong autocratic governments led to the breakup of these nations:

Agustín de Iturbide was overthrown by General Antonio López de Santa Anna

Central America broke away but the federation failed due to conflicts between Conservatives and Liberals.

López de Santa Anna's prompted revolts that led to the independence of Texas and the Mexican-American War, causing Mexico's loss of present-day Southwest US.

Simon Bolivar declared himself dictator of (Gran) Colombia in August 1828, a month later survived a failed assassination attempt, and resigned in 1830 when the collapse of the nation was imminent. The collapse led to the independent countries of Ecuador, Colombia (known as New Grenada at the time), and Venezuela. Panama remained part of the current Colombia (New Grenada) until 1903 when it broke away mostly due to the rejection of the construction of the Panama Canal by the Colombian Congress.

Inter-province wars in Río de la Plata eventually led to separate countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Bolivia joined Peru and was ruled by the Supreme Protector Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz. Opposition to the inclusion of Chile led to conflict and the dissolution of the Confederation.

One reason is because of the poor topography, and the lack of good transportation. Take the southern cone, for instance. The Andes Mountains divide Argentina and Chile. They also divide Colombia and Venezuela further north.

One kind of wonders why Uruguay and Paraguay are separate entities from Argentina, until one realizes that they formed around Montevideo and Asuncion respectively, and are badly connected to population centers in Argentina and Brazil. (Plus some 18th century Jesuit priests trained "local" Indian armies to repel invasions from invaders from the other two countries.)

Peru and Bolivia might have logically united, except for opposition from Chile.

Unlike Brazil, which is relatively compact, the Spanish speaking parts of Latin American are basically strung out in a long, thin, line. Even the six or seven central American countries basically consist of settlements along the coasts, with jungle in between DISconnecting the main cities (and hence countries) from one another.

If you study Brazilian History as well (I am Brazilian and I have read some very good Brazilian history books), you see that in Brazil many of the provinces had separatists feelings, in several occasions along the time. I will not mention examples, but there are dozens of rebellions that happened along the XIX century. And even in 1930 we had an armed "Revolution" in São Paulo state, with strong "autonomous" feelings.

But the fact that we had a "strong" personality king in the XIX century (arguably not a wise king, but a vigorous one), especially on the early days of Independence, that repressed the rebels, helped to keep the union. In many other occasions, the "central government", based on Rio de Janeiro, managed to contain other revolutionary instincts/actions as well.

In resume, when one reads about Brazilian history, one can realize that for several occasions we were on the verge of getting fragmented in a similar way to what happened with the Spanish colonies, but for many particular reasons, along the time, the central government managed to keep the unity.